


Falling In

by Darienne_LeFey



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, M/M, Manaketes (Fire Emblem), Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darienne_LeFey/pseuds/Darienne_LeFey
Summary: Darienne, a long slumbering dragon has been unexpectedly awoken in a time she is not familiar with. She has little memory of her life before but reflexively changes her form, losing her heart stone. She finds herself a manakete in a new world still plagued by old enemies. She tries to navigate her draconic soul through a human age, discovering hope, friendships and possibly love... but does seeing these humans wearing the broken bones and stolen power of those she once called friends - and maybe lovers turn her from them? Can she forgive her part in their deaths and subsequent un-lives in the faces around her?
Relationships: Blue Lions Students/Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem)
Kudos: 2





	Falling In

**Author's Note:**

> Head canon - taking place pretty much immediately after the player involved events of FE:3H in a world played through the Blue Lions. A male Byleth- now the Arch Bishop is part of the canon, but is not the central character. The main character is a creation of my own.   
> *** please be aware that I am new to the Fire Emblem universe - and I may not have facts or canon correct in relation to lore etc. I am writing this for the love of the characters and world created. I always appreciate learning more about the worlds and the lore - please share your knowledge - just be nice. ***

1

Something changed. She was used to the natural ebb and flow of the lands around her. The ground shifted and settled as any planet’s crust might, but this was different. This woke her. It wasn’t so much a tremor of the land but in the magics that had governed the continent for the millennia she’d been asleep. Memories, or dreams - she could no longer tell, faded like smoke in her mind as the fog of sleep dissipated. There was an urgency to this waking.

Consciousness impeded on her, the shell of oblivion was cracking and and the comfort of the darkness of sleep was washed away by the very real, and cold dark of the earth as it crumbled over her. Panic struck her. The cave she’d hidden in was collapsing and flooding with water that had been glaciers when she’d first sought the solace of sleep despite the pleas of her brethren to remain with them; playing at being the curious species that was native to this place. Blending, hiding; pretending to be something other than what they were. A game that had cost some their sentience. Water rose past her flank as she struggled to uncurl from centuries of being wound around herself. Wings scraped and ground against the ceiling that shuddered with the weight of water above it. The earth beneath her began to liquify as ground water rose. If she didn’t break free, she’d find herself buried alive. An inglorious end she preferred to avoid.

The entrance to her hidden domain had long since collapsed. The only option was to go up. Bursting through the ceiling like some desperate hatchling, praying that the weight of whatever body of water came crashing down on her didn’t crush her to oblivion. Pulling her delicate wings in, she pulled as much of the stale damp air as she could into her lungs. A prayer to the gods whose names she’d long forgotten, she thrust her horned forehead upwards.

The world collapsed in on her creating a vacuum, tossing her body against collapsing stalagmites and ferrous stone. Panic set in as she flailed, thrusting her wings to their full span and forcing herself through the water. Delicate membranes tore under the pressure and debris, the pain only feeding her fierce desire to survive. To her surprise, she realized that she feared death. Slumber had been her escape from a world where she had seen only death for herself and her kind. She had hidden like a coward, feigning ambivalence. Now, as her body burned with the need for air and her fogged memory plagued her with the shadows of regrets and fears and loss, finally, she fought to live. 

Just as blackness crept to the fringes of her mind, light broke through the watery grave she’d begun resign herself to. Rage, fear and something more… something she’d thought she’d extinguished long ago. Hope. It burned in her soul still. Extending her wings, she thrust upwards towards the shimmering surface. Memory or instinct, she knew not which, touched her as she broke the surface. Change.

Again in so many moments, her world shifted and new, weaker lungs gasped for breath and slender, pale arms grasped the air for purchase that wasn’t there. She felt her strength ebb as her heart slipped from her shivering hands and floated back into the depths of her watery tomb. It was lost, there was no way this body could survive a return to those depths. Her ragged throat keened. This frail body struggled and shivered as she tried to understand where and when she found herself. Fear clutched at her. Helpless. Trapped in a body that could not contain all of her power, she was lessened. Yet she lived.

She’d chosen to live. She’d chosen for the first time to hope. She remembered little but wraiths of impressions and brethren. She did not even remember who she had been. Nameless and timeless, she clumsily coordinated these new limbs and sought the shoreline. Whoever she had been, the was that being no longer. Time, the oblivion of darkness, she didn’t know what had happened - only that the dragon that woke was not the one that had hidden herself from the world when the darkness came. She would not be that.


End file.
